


command me to be well

by Qzil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood Loss, Emotional Healing, F/M, Guilty Castiel, Torture, Vaginal Sex, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 00:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3549257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qzil/pseuds/Qzil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know. You talked about it a lot, in the hospital. You wanted God to let you die.”</p>
<p>“I still feel like that,” he tells her. “Sometimes. I feel like…”</p>
<p>Meg shushes him by pressing a finger to his lips. “You feel like you need to be punished.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	command me to be well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodandcream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/gifts).



It starts when he gets his grace back. 

He feels whole again, without the other angel’s grace sliding around inside of his borrowed flesh, feels like himself. 

Or ought to.

But when he’s finally alone and can feel himself settle back into his body (really his now, Jimmy Novak’s soul having been freed to Heaven), he still can’t quite shake the slimy feeling inside of him. When he closes his eyes he can feel the other angel’s grace still sliding around inside of him, straining against his skin and trying to flee the body it does not belong in. 

No matter what he does, the feeling lingers, creeping up on him in the quiet hours of the night when the Winchesters are asleep and the bunker is silent. The slimy feeling bubbles just below his skin, and when he is alone it calls up other images as well, innocent church goers dead under his hand and the thousands of angels dead on the ground in what should be a peaceful Tuesday afternoon. 

He cannot speak to the Winchesters. Dean looks at him with a mixture of anger and pity, and gives speeches about manning up. Sam tries, he does, but there is judgment in his voice as well. 

So he goes to Meg. 

Meg, who he found bleeding out in the alley that the boys left her in, clinging to life and nearly too far gone for him to save. Meg, who had screamed and raged and told him to let her die rather than trap her down in Hell for eternity.

Meg, who sat with him in the hospital and listened to him scream when the drugs the doctors pumped into him had kept him trapped in sleep he didn’t need. Meg, who listened to him talk without judgment, for she had done worse than him in all her years on Earth. Meg, who had voluntarily bared her skin to him and let him sear her flesh, voluntarily let him burn symbols into her body that would guarantee she would be the last demon on Earth when the Winchesters sent every other demon back to Hell. 

It takes him a while to find her. Her hiding places are always secluded, and she never uses the same one twice, always moving to keep herself off the radar, using burner phones so he cannot save her number. He comes across her old hiding places at first, run down motels and abandoned homes in the middle of nowhere before he finds her squatting in the basement of an abandoned mental health facility. Her wards blend in with the graffiti on the walls, and for a moment he finds himself impressed. Another angel or demon would be able to tell what was hiding there, but not a human. Human authorities or hunters would simply assume her sigils to be the work of some teenagers breaking into the facility and spray-painting the walls with ‘Santanic’ symbols found on the Internet. 

He is not surprised that Meg survives. 

Even knowing where she is, it takes him a while to find her. The facility is huge, the decaying buildings sprawling over the land like an invading force against the growing vegetation trying to reclaim the property. He jumps when his cell phone, forgotten in his pocket until now, goes off and breaks the peaceful silence of the woods. 

“C building,” Meg says. “Third basement. I’m in pretty deep.”

He slips into the building and stumbles his way down the stairs, walking clumsily in the darkness. The sunlight that pours in from the broken windows vanishes, replaced by a crushing darkness that presses in around him until he has to stretch his hands out to touch the walls of the corridor for balance. After that there is another set of stairs, and then another. He reaches the halfway point before he gasps and feels lukewarm water lapping at his ankles. 

“Back here,” Meg calls. “It only goes up to my chest, so you should be fine.”

Castiel follows her voice down into the darkness. The filthy water swirls around his ankles and his shoes move through the thin layer of sludge that coats the floor and yet he does not shudder and try to clean himself. It doesn’t matter anyway, he reasons. His outside may as well match his insides. 

He reaches the bottom of the stairs and sees a faint light shining through an open doorway. The water drags on his coat, slowing him, but he walks forward anyway, unable to fly or use his powers under the wards that he can feel coating the walls and ceiling around him. 

He walks through another doorway and sees Meg, somehow dry and clean, sitting cross-legged on top of a high table, a book in her lap and a battery-powered lantern at her side. She looks up when she sees him, sets the book aside, and pats the table next to her. 

“What’s up, Clarence?” she asks. “Or is this just a social call?”

He climbs onto the table next to her, soiled water dripping from his clothes. Meg inches away from him. The lantern gives off enough of a glow that he can see the layers of symbols on the wall, already turning a rusty brown and covering older, faded layers of graffiti from years past. 

“Why here?” he asks her instead. 

“I was staying upstairs, but stupid teenagers kept breaking in to drink and hunt for ghosts,” she explains. “Scared them off pretty good, then moved down here. None of them have tried to risk the water yet.”

“How long?”

“Three weeks.” She turns to face him and moves the lantern between them. “What did you need to say in person that you couldn’t say over the phone?”

“I need your help,” he blurts out. Meg cocks an eyebrow but leans in, waiting for his request. Like before, when they were in the hospital, she does not judge him, but simply listens to all the things he’s done since they last parted, him to jump back into a war and her to hide and heal. 

“Color me surprised, Clarence, but I’m not sure what you’re asking,” she tells him when he’s finished. “I don’t know what you want me to do to help with that.”

“How did you forgive yourself? For all of it?” he asks her. Meg narrows her eyes. 

“I never had to,” she says. “I don’t feel the need for it. I don’t feel guilty. It happened. I can’t undo it.”

“You screamed at me to let you die,” he reminds her. “I understand that, too.”

“I know. You talked about it a lot, in the hospital. You wanted God to let you die.”

“I still feel like that,” he tells her. “Sometimes. I feel like…”

Meg shushes him by pressing a finger to his lips. “You feel like you need to be punished.”

“Yes,” he says, relieved that she understands, that she can voice what he cannot and is willing to give what he cannot bring himself to request.

“Everyone’s forgiven you,” she reminds him. Castiel can just hear a hint of bitterness in her tone. 

“I’ve forgiven you for what you’ve done,” he says quietly. 

“You’re an angel, Clarence. That’s sort of your whole gig.” She sighs and moves the lantern. “I think I know what to do. But I’ll need some time to get everything together. I’m still in hiding, and I need to be discreet.” She does not argue with him, does not try to convince him that he does not need more punishment for his actions, but neither does she agree. She simply lets him feel. 

He slumps his shoulders, relieved. If there is one being he knows that has truly mastered punishment, it’s Meg. 

“Thank you,” he says, rising to leave. Meg grabs his hand and slides it under her shirt until his fingers brush the mass of scars just under her breast. He traces the symbol with the tips of his fingers, the jagged scars rough under his skin, and understands that it is the only thank you he will ever get from her. 

“I’ll let you know,” she promises. Before he can move she swings herself off the table and into the murky water. Without speaking she vanishes into the darkness, but he can still hear her footsteps and the slight splash of the water. 

The moment they stop the room turns cold and the water under him turns icy, as if Meg’s presence was the only thing warming the room. The water reeks of sulfur but Castiel stills and breathes in the smell, anyway, and for a moment he is back at the hospital, safe with Meg beside him, uncaring about the world going to Hell just outside their door. 

. 

Meg calls him a week and a half later while he’s sitting on a park bench in Mississippi, her abandoned book in his lap. He has to cover his other ear to hear her, blocking out the children screaming in the background as they go about their games. He folds down the corner of his page and sets the historical romance aside. 

“Meg?”

“I figured it out,” she says. Speaking quickly into the phone, she rattles off her location and hangs up on him without waiting for an answer. 

Castiel stands and goes to her, leaving the book behind for some other parent to pick up if they wish it. When he lands he finds himself outside of an abandoned factory in Ohio. Much like the mental facility he’d last met her in, here too the land strives forward to reclaim the structure. Weeds poke up through the concrete and small trees dot what he is sure was once and immaculate lawn. Shards of glass sparkle in the broken windows as the decaying brinks crumple and Castiel is unsurprised at Meg’s hiding place. 

The air around him gets warmer the closer he moves to the building and Castiel walks into it willingly, despite not knowing exactly what Meg has planned. The birds twitter around him and a squirrel races across his path and veers sharply away from the entrance, repulsed. 

Castiel ignores the obvious warning and steps inside. Immediately he can no longer hear the birds or the other small animals outside, and inhales sharply when he sees symbols that are meant to soundproof scrawled on the walls. Holes in the roof allow the sunlight to pour in, casting natural spotlights on the floor of the factory’s small front room. 

“No one will hear us here, or find us,” Meg promises, stepping into an open doorway. The large, one formidable steel door lays at her feet, rusty at the bottom and the hinges bent. 

Castiel looks at her and swallows at her transformation. Gone are her skin tight jeans and dark leather jacket. Instead, she has replaced her clothes with a loose, knee-length lavender dress and a lighter cardigan that is too big for her and slips down off her shoulder to expose the dress’ thin straps. Immaculate white stockings and low, sensible shoes cover her legs and feet from view. A string of pearls winds itself around her neck and her hair is up in a sensible bun, making her into the very picture of innocence and giving off the impression that she could never hurt another living thing. 

She looks so unlike herself, so out of place in her dingy surroundings, that Castiel has to blink a few times to make sure she is really there. Meg ignores his surprise and holds her hand out toward him, beckoning him to the doorway. Castiel moves for her automatically, trusting her, and slips his hand into hers. 

“Before we go in, we need to talk about some things,” she says. Castiel focuses on the string of pearls around her neck and nods. The slimy feeling returns to his skin and it makes him want to scratch at his flesh until he bleeds to purge it from himself. “If I go too far, say ‘red’ and I’ll stop. Anything other than that, don’t speak unless I tell you to.”

“Alright,” he agrees. Meg squeezes his hand and he feels strangely calm, the slimy feeling in his skin sliding away until it is barely there. She turns and leads him through the doorway, flicking her other hand behind her so the rusted steel door rises from the floor and settles back into place. Meg strides across the room, her low, square heels making soft clicking sounds on the concrete floor of the factory’s large main chamber. There are more holes in the ceiling, allowing the sunlight to pour in and spread warmth throughout the room. Up in the rafters Castiel can see long-abandoned bird’s nests, and above them more symbols painted on the rotting wood. Unlike the ones outside they are meant to amplify sound rather than muffle it. 

He turns his gaze to the rest of the large room and swallows hard. It had been gutted, of course, most of the equipment stripped away when the building was left to be reclaimed by nature, and so he cannot tell what the factory originally produced. But he can see the bare bones of machines left behind, the skeletons placed around the towering steel support beams like parishioners at worship. Next to one the unidentifiable machines is a large table made of dark wood, long enough to seat twelve people comfortably and wide enough for two people to sprawl out side by side. In the shadows he can just make out a high stool next to it, but it is impossible for him to tell what it holds. 

Meg moves to stand between two metal support beams and taps her foot at him, her eyes hardening and the corners of her mouth turning down slightly. 

“Strip.”

“Excuse me?”

Her frown deepens. “Strip. All of it.” 

He obeys her, feeling the slimy feeling return to his skin as he peels off the protective layers. Meg never looks away from him, her dark, unblinking eyes drinking in every inch of his skin as he exposes it. Her gaze makes him feel small, vulnerable, and makes him slow and clumsy. His fingers fumble with the buttons on his shirt and the zipper of his pants. The longer he takes, the closer Meg gets, walking slowly across the floor until she is standing in front of him and he is clad only in his vessel’s sensible white boxers. 

“All of it,” she repeats. He hesitates, but does, turning his back to neatly fold his clothing and place it in a pile on the floor. When he turns to face her again, exposed, Meg does not glance down. Instead, her brown eyes bore into his and he is forced to watch as they slowly turn black, her pupils expanding to fill the whites until she looks inhuman. Even with the demon looking at him, her clothing still suggests purity and innocence, and he finds that the contrast makes his stomach turn. 

Meg moves behind him and roughly shoves him toward the support beams without speaking. He goes where she leads, stopping between the two metal pillars when her hand reaches up to tangle in his hair and yank him to a halt. 

“Arms out to your sides,” she orders. He obeys her, wincing in pain when she forces his arms to stretch further in order to be secured to the support beams. Thick ropes bite into the soft skin of his wrists, but when Castiel glances over he sees that they are ordinary bonds with no protective sigils to prevent his escape, should he wish to flee. 

Meg walks in front of him and frowns, eyes drinking in his bared flesh in a detached, impersonal way. There is no playfulness in her movements, no comments to suggest that this is just another game they’re playing in some nondescript hotel room like they have so often in the past. 

She nods once, then leaves him, exposed, and vanishes into the shadows. Castiel shivers despite the heat of the room and stares at the symbol smeared on the wall in front of him. The blood has begun to flake, he notices, suggesting that Meg has been here longer than the one day. 

She fills his vision again before he can contemplate how long she’s been holed up in the factory. Eyes once again a normal human brown, she raises a coiled whip to her breast and stares at him. She narrows her eyes and tilts her head slightly in silent communication. 

_Last chance to back out. You sure you want this?_

His nod of affirmation is small, barely perceptible, but it is enough for Meg.

“Face forward. Do not speak,” she tells him. He nods again. Her eyes fill with black and her face once again transforms into a hard, unreadable mask. The shoulder of her cardigan slips down again, baring her pale flesh, but she does not pull it back into place. Instead she ignores him and walks out of his line of sight, the sound of her shoes hitting the floor his only point of reference for where she is. 

The clicking stops when she is standing behind him, almost at the rusted steel door if he read her footsteps right, leaving an expanse of space between their bodies. He shivers again, waiting for the first blow, and finds himself relaxing as the minutes pass and it does not come. His arms begin to ache from the strain of being pulled too tight. Meg remains silent behind him until the only sounds that reach his ears are the beating of his vessel’s heart and his own heavy breathing. 

The first strike comes without warning. Meg wastes no time with playful strokes or light blows to prepare him. The first stroke is precise, practiced, and painful. The leather bites through is flesh easily and he feels blood flow from the wound as the crack of the whip echoes impossibly loud through the large room, amplified by the spells scrawled across the walls. Still, he does not scream, not at first, but simply grits his teeth and takes the pain into himself. His vessel falters for a moment, its brain registering pleasure for just the barest moment before the burning pain sets in. 

Meg gives him a moment before she brings the whip down again. He does not scream the second time, or the third, or the fourth. He screams on the fifth blow, his vision momentarily swimming with the pain, and finds himself falling forward, putting more strain on his shoulders. The ropes hold him in place and he struggles to right himself as Meg strikes him again. 

His body moves on instinct, throwing itself forward to escape the pain coming from behind, but Meg ignores his feeble efforts, simply bringing the whip down again and again. The crack of the leather meeting air and flesh echoes off the walls with his screams until he cannot see and the bloody sigil on the wall in front of him becomes blurry. His vessel takes over, only able to register pain as faces swim in front of him with each strike of the whip.  

_Crack._

Innocent and not no innocent churchgoers, screaming, pleading, and falling still in their pews. 

_Crack._

Samandriel. Eyes wide in surprise and disbelief. 

_Crack._

Balthazar, his brother. 

_Crack._

Rachel, clutching at herself as the life bleeds out of her and the shadows of her wings begin to burn themselves into the ground. 

_Crack._

Countless angels in heaven, dead on the grass. 

_Crack._

Dean’s face, swollen and bleeding by his own hand, his own charge nearly destroyed because he wasn’t strong enough to fight another angel’s control. 

_Crack._

Hael. Her eyes filled with hate. 

Meg brings the whip down again and this time the blow knocks his legs out from under him. His shoulders scream in pain under the strain of supporting his body while being pulled so far apart. His bare feet slip through his blood cooling on the ground. The sound of the whip and his own screams become muffled, distant, until he can no longer hear them. He looks over the faces of all those he’s failed and killed and screams until he can no longer see them and all he can see is red. 

But he does not say the word, does not ask her to stop. Instead he rights himself under Meg’s blows and struggles to his feet despite the slippery ground and arches his back into the whip. The pain flows through him, warming him from his head to the tips of his toes and nearly numb fingers despite the blood streaming from his back. The whip descends again, cutting through exposed muscle, but he does not pull away. Castiel throws himself to the pain and lets it crawl inside of him and purge the slime from underneath his skin. 

He hears a muffled thump behind him, followed by the soft click of Meg’s shoes. The sound stops when he feels her standing less than an inch away from his body, heat pouring off her small vessel, burning the wounds on his back where he is sure the skin hangs in tatters. Were he not an angel, his vessel would be dead from pain or shock or blood loss. As it is, he channels his grace into keeping it alive and working, but knows that despite all of that, Meg has hurt him enough to almost kill him, and that she must know that, too. Must know just how much an angel can take before it can no longer keep a vessel alive. 

Her fist returns to his hair, gripping hard. She pushes him down, forcing him to his knees at her feet, and he goes willingly for her. Meg follows him down, no doubt staining her immaculate stockings and her pretty dress. She does not speak, and he does not turn his head to look at her even as she sinks her teeth into the back of his neck hard enough to draw blood and hooks her nails into his bloody mess of a back. 

He screams again when she rips them downward, tearing at the muscle and shredding the few stripes of unmarred flesh that still clings together until he is completely exposed, inside and out. Her nails begin their path again, tearing at him until he is struggling to get away from her and the rotting support beams groan under the weight of his angelic strength and the ropes cut his skin, sending fresh blood rolling down his arms and dripping to the floor. 

Meg simply presses herself against him and rubs her upper body over his mangled flesh, the small movements sending more pain through his body until it is impossible to think, impossible to recall what he is or why he’s there. His ears begin to buzz. 

Until Meg stops and there is no more feeling, not even the lingering pain, the nerves in his back too dead to feel anything. He hovers for a moment on the edge of consciousness, unaware of anything in the room, and finds himself plunging toward the floor as the ropes around his wrists snap and feeling flows back into his arm. His nose collides painfully with the concrete, breaking it, and blood drips sluggishly down his face and into his mouth. 

He only has a moment’s respite before Meg is on him again, yanking him to his feet by his hair, ripping out several chunks in the process. She readjusts her grip and uses her demonic strength to keep him upright. 

“Move,” she orders, forcing him forward. Her voice remains calm and even, impersonal, and Castiel finds himself obeying it without question. He lets Meg lead him through the massive room and to the large table, legs giving out when she releases him. His arms flail wildly, trying to catch the edge of the wood and failing, leaving him to fall onto the hard ground. Landing on his back at Meg’s feet, he tilts his head backward and looks up into her still, black eyes. 

The front of her cardigan is wet and stained with his blood. It streaks down her stockings, shockingly red against the white. Strands of dark hair have escaped her tight bun to float around her face. The rest of the world blurs around her, colors swimming together into a fog until she is the only thing he is certain is real. 

“Stand up,” she says. “Get on the table. Now. On your back.”

He struggles to obey her, trying and failing to stand twice until he finally grabs the edge of the table on his third attempt and manages to haul himself up. He glances back at her for confirmation that is doing well, doing right, but her face remains unreadable and he redoubles his efforts until he finds himself on his back, breathing hard while colors swirl above him. Gray, rotting wood and painful yellow sunlight and emerald leaves and an impossibly blue sky spin above him, weaving together until Meg comes into sight again, tendrils of hair hanging down toward his face and her pale skin almost glowing in his vision.   
Almost distantly he feels her settle herself on his lap and lean forward to grab his wrists, pinning them above his head. In his peripheral vision he sees her groping at the high stool next to his head, hand coming back into sight holding a large, rusty nail at least seven inches long and half an inch thick. 

He does not speak, and neither does she. Instead, she scrapes the tapered end of the nail over his palm and raises a small hammer in her other hand. Castiel lies still under her and focuses on her eyes as she brings the hammer down. The sound echoes through the room thanks to the symbols on the walls and seems to vibrate through his bones until it sinks all the way into his true form. Meg raises the hammer again and brings it down twice more until his palm is pinned above his head and the flared top of the nail rests against his skin. 

She tilts her head to the side and studies her work for a moment before she reaches for another nail and begins the process again, stretching his abused arm high above his head. This time the pain grounds him, separating the colors still mixing above him until they are almost distinct from each other.

Meg reaches for something else and scoots down until she’s perched on his ankles, a tube clutched in one hands. He watches, detached, as she squeezes something onto her fingers and massages cold gel onto his cock, stirring it despite the fact that there should not be enough blood left in his body to do so, causing Castiel to wonder if Meg can use her demonic powers for that, too. After a moment she removes her cardigan, stiff with his drying blood, and uses it to wipe the gel from him before slithering back up his body. 

The sound her stockings make when she reaches under the skirt of her once clean dress to tear them sounds louder in his ears than the whip or his screams did. Meg throws her head back, causing more hair to escape from her bun, and raises herself onto her knees in a businesslike fashion and sinks down onto him. 

He feels no pleasure while she moves, whatever she’s used on him dulls his senses too much for that. Meg rocks above him, the force of her body sending his moving on the table, causing pain to shoot through him as the damaged flesh of his palm tugs at the nails keeping him in place. 

Gone is the clean picture of innocence that she once was, replaced with something, dirty and sinful and streaked with blood. The narrow strap of her dress falls, exposing the top of one pale breast to his view. His eyes begin to water from the pain and his head swims, blood pounding in his ears as the colors around him once again form into a blurry mist, Meg the only thing standing out from the chaotic rainbow filling the room, a blur of lavender and white and black. 

He focuses on her and allows her to ride him, allows her to run her hands over his chest and brace herself on his wrists and mold him into whatever she needs him to be, allows her take him and use him as she sees fit. She moves with her head thrown back and her mouth open in pleasure, using him until the torn muscles on his back begin to knit themselves together and skin begins to grow anew. Meg continues moving even after she’s had her own pleasure, fingers curling around his wrists and squeezing with a bruising force. The string of pearls around her neck slaps against her pale flesh with every movement and he watches, fascinated by the repetitive motion until, unfeeling, he spills himself inside her. 

Feeling begins to creep back through his limbs. The world stops spinning and colors snap into their proper place. Still, he does not move, his mind numb as he feels Meg make her way farther up his body to sit on his chest, leaving a wet trail behind on his body. Her fingers slip clumsily around the blunt head on the nail embedded in his flesh, sending fire down his arms but still he does not move until she jerks her hand without warning, freeing him, and bends her head to the wound. 

Her tongue slips into the large hold easily, but strangely does not hurt him as she laps at the circular tear. The small, soft sound of her tongue rasping over his damaged flesh soothes him, and he feels his breathing even out as she moves to the other one, throwing the discarded nails to the concrete floor before she swings off after them. 

“You can get up now,” she says. “That’s it.”

He rises, but lays back down again when his head spins. His body may be mostly healed, but not enough for sudden movements. Castiel closes his eyes and waits for the world to stop spinning under him. He lies still until it does, breathing slow and even, and waits for the slimy feeling to return, opening his eyes when it does not. 

Meg perches herself on the edge of the table and casually reaches to yank the tattered remains of her blood soaked stockings off her legs. “Feel better?”

“Much,” he says. He still remembers all the faces of those he’s killed, remembers the things he’s done, and still feels guilt. But it is less now, with the pain he’s caused repaid willingly with his own blood, his own pain.

Meg snorts and goes to stand. Castiel moves faster than he should, sitting up and reaching to wrap his arms around her and draw her close. She struggles for a moment before sinking into the embrace and allowing him to run his bloodstained hands through her hair, freeing it completely from its bun. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. Meg grunts against his shoulder before she returns his hug. 

“Of course.”

The bloody sigils on the walls crumble, too dry to hold, allowing sounds from outside to rush in. Thunder sounds once, twice, and rain begins to fall.


End file.
